Clean Water & Sanitation

NEW YORK (IDN) – The United Nations is on way to improving tools available for designing sustainable development policies, and building a search engine for people working on solutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for accessing relevant knowledge on science, technology and innovation.

The UN Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) announced on February 12 that a team from the University of Southampton, a public research university in the United Kingdom, had won the Unite Ideas #SDGInsights challenge for its methodology to identify drinking water service in Liberia.

NEW YORK | ACCRA (IDN) – The state-owned Ghana Water Company Ltd (GWCL) has announced that due to severe dry winter winds (called ‘harmattan’) and the drying up of rivers, water deliveries will be rationed over the coming months while the country awaits the rain.

“We are sorry to inform the consuming public that the situation has led to intermittent water supply in most cities and towns in the country,” said Stanley Martey, communications director of the national company. The rate of evaporation of water bodies nationwide has become alarming and there will be consequences for some communities, he said.

VIENNA (IDN) – A comfort often overlooked, the water served at the Vienna UN headquarters is locally sourced from mountains outside of the city. In Austria, water is a point of pride. This developed nation's water sector is committed not only to quality water systems but also to sustainable practices regarding the water and waste industry. For Austrians, and those frequenting the UN's conference rooms in Vienna, exceptional drinking water is a given.

Following is the text of a speech given by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (1997-2006),the founding chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, on September 7, 2017 at the ‘Making Waves’ conference in Afsluitdijk (English: Enclosure Dam), a major causeway in the Netherlands, constructed between 1927 and 1932. It is being reproduced courtesy of the Kofi Annan Foundation. – The Editor.

GENEVA (IDN-INPS) - I can’t think of a more symbolic and inspirational location to promote innovative solutions around water, food and energy than the iconic Afsluitdijk. The dam is a masterpiece of Dutch engineering and a symbol for the country’s centuries-long fight against flooding from the sea.

MWENEZI; Zimbabwe (IDN) - Raviro Chawuruka scoops out sand from a well on a stream bank closer to her rural home in Rutenga, 443 km west of Harare, in Mwenezi district in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province.

At the age of 72, Chawuruka says she has known no rest while scavenging for water, this as she daily battles it out with the sand-filled water well in the vicinity of her home. She stands out among millions of Africans to whom piped water still remains a luxury, decades after several African nations gained independence from their former colonisers: Zimbabwe over 37 years ago.

According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, 65 percent of Zimbabwe’s 14 million people such as Chawuruka are domiciled in rural areas, where they have become the number one victims of lack of piped water.

NAIROBI (ACP-IDN) – Braving a scorching temperature, 38-year-old Caroline Rono rambles barefoot along a tiny path that snakes in the direction of the reptile-infested salty seasonal Lake Solai in Kenya’s Rift Valley with the giggling baby on her back swaying to the movement of her mother’s hips.

In the rural areas of Kenya, as in virtually in all African countries, the burden of collecting, carrying and managing water has always rested on the shoulders of women, and under the weight of recurrent droughts, this burden has almost become unbearable.

HARARE (IDN) – Evelyn Mbiza struggles with a wheelbarrow laden with multiple five litre containers filled with water while her eight-year-old child follows behind carrying another container as the two head home after spending several hours queuing for the precious liquid at a local borehole in Malbereign, a medium-income suburb in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.

For 26-year-old Mbiza, despite the heavy rains that have pounded this Southern African nation, tap water has become a scarce commodity as local authorities constantly cut water supplies in the capital claiming to be doing maintenance work.

“It’s sad; all dams are full of water while we have no water here. It’s humiliating to be queuing for water at boreholes when you are living in the city,” Mbiza told IDN.

JOHANNESBURG (ACP-IDN) – For South Africans living in slums crowded with makeshift homes standing side by side, residents battle to draw water from the very few water taps available.

Like countries the world over, South Africa is mandated to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030, but for many South Africans like 24-year old Thembisa Mzwakhe living in Diepkloof, South Africa’s populous slum area in Johannesburg, growing up in the shanty area with inadequate water supplies has become normal.

STOCKHOLM (IDN) – Rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa is leading to increased urbanisation resulting in high volumes of both solid and water waste, and making compliance with sanitation regulations and standards a major issue.

To face up to the challenge, participants in a session on sustainable urban sanitation during the World Water Week conference held in Stockholm, Sweden, from August 28 - September 2 called for a multi-pronged approach involving all stakeholders to achieve the goal of sustainable urban sanitation.

SINGAPORE (IDN | Lotus News Features) - China would like to project the release of Mekong River waters from its dams in March to “assist” drought-stricken farmers and fisheries further downstream, especially in Vietnam, as a magnanimous gesture from a friendly neighbour. But that action is in fact the reflection of a greater environmental and political crisis that is brewing in the region.

China announced middle of March that in response to a Vietnamese request, it will discharge from March 15 to April 10 water from the Jinghong hydropower station on the Mekong River in Yunnan province to the lower reaches of the Mekong River to alleviate drought in Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.